Vagabond 3 by Takehiko Inoue    Inked drawing by Takehiko Inoue, coloring by me in Photoshop CS4.     Tweet Review: With swords like that, why fight?   If I can turn ANY club readers into graphic novel fans...I am going to be very happy, but then so will you. As most club readers are also artists, this challenge especially emphasizes the relationship between words and pictures. And, as in graphic novels and manga...that's exactly what you get!   A little look into Japanese manga is enough to pique anyone's interest.  The manga artists keep up with  societies interests. The stories written are illustrated for all age groups;  boys and girls, men and women. The series Vagabond , my April book is seinem  manga which means it's written for men ages 18-40. But I don't think I'll be arrested for reading it.   The first two things to know about Vagabond is that the artist Takehiko Inoue is also the author and his drawings are done, up until very recently, with a black ink...
 
Initial thought is that it reminds me of a Rorschach test. I think the consciousness keeps on changing around these images.
ReplyDeleteI started off thinking they were fish. Then I started seeing a face inside the blue body, and the whole thing took on a suggestion of a figure looking downwards (with a devil figure behind, conjuring a magical spell). Then I started seeing floating planets... (plus, inside the two bodies - there's more and more figures cut out, as it were, like one of those paper chain patterns...)
(and all the time, I'm wondering why 'Mary's' - are they two icons that belong to the Virgin Mother? Is this a place - we're at Mary's?)
I think there is a theme of reproduction going on here, since the two figures/objects are both identical. But which one is the original?
I think the colour scheme is ash and blue flame.
The diagonal is perhaps significant. It means 'from angle to angle' in the ancient greek. It's probably a sort of meta-comment on the way we perceive and saying that there's nothing outside of sight (or we can't get out of looking, no matter how much we try).
Interestingly, the shadow figure decapitates and makes the head introspective - is this a comment on over-intellectualisation of looking?
Suneel, you are such a writer! And a writer of fiction :). It is a sketch of Mary Mangalane from Leonardo Da Vinci. I ran it through Illustrator and the nifty tools that provide "gradiance". It's really a select and click device, really simple and strange in the end. Over-intellectualizing always welcome!
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